Teaching English with Chinese characteristics: A corpus analysis of changes in university curricula

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Jiang, Feng Kevin and Hyland, Ken (2024) Teaching English with Chinese characteristics: A corpus analysis of changes in university curricula. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teachings. ISSN 0019-042X

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Abstract

English language teaching has had a chequered history in China, reflecting an increasing desire to modernise and participate on the world stage combined with a watchful caution against importing unwanted cultural elements. Change, however, has proceeded rapidly in the last 35 years, and China now provides around 700,000 postgraduate students annually to Western universities. Given this importance to western universities and the concerns surrounding the nature and perceived purposes of English-medium instruction, we believe a better understanding of Chinese ELT is crucial. This article tracks the changing role and importance of English in China through its language policy for university non-English majors. We do this using a corpus approach to analyse the keywords in the 1986, 1999, 2007 and 2020 iterations of the national curriculum documents. Our results show a focus on language skills has been replaced by employer-friendly communicative requirements, followed by greater student awareness of learning strategies, and most recently, a more culturally sensitive and critical orientation. We offer a study of an EFL curriculum development outside a more familiar Western context, suggesting the value of discourse analyses to understanding key changes in curricula, and revealing that choices regarding language instruction are rarely ‘neutral’ pedagogical decisions.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Data availability: The raw data can be obtained on request from the corresponding author.
Uncontrolled Keywords: elt in china,diachronic change,language policy,university curricula,language and linguistics,linguistics and language ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200/1203
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Language in Education
Related URLs:
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 07 Dec 2024 01:40
Last Modified: 14 Dec 2024 01:39
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/97937
DOI: 10.1515/iral-2024-0212

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